True North
by Gig in the Sky
Summary: Can patterns be broken? Mer and Derek post 3.21 'Desire'. One shot.


_But would north be true?  
Why should I?  
Why should I cry for you?  
Dark angels follow me  
Over the godless sea  
Mountains of endless falling  
For all my days remaining_

_What would be true?_

_Sometimes I see your face  
The stars seem to lose their place  
Why must I think of you?  
Why must I?  
Why should I?_

_Why should I cry for you?  
Why would you want me to?  
And what would it mean to say  
That, "I loved you in my fashion"?_

-- "Why Should I Cry For You?" - Sting

**True North**

If ever there was a time to be dark and twisty, this would be it, Meredith thinks, fighting the urge to actually, physically _run_ across the stretch of Derek's land that stands between his trailer and her car. She digs frantically in her pocket for her car keys when she reaches the vehicle, but comes up empty-handed. She thinks that they must have fallen on the floor while she was taking off her pants, and in her haste to get in his bed, and back in his good graces, she mustn't have noticed. For a moment, Meredith considers her options: does she go crawling back to ask for her keys? Does she resort to walking? Hot-wiring her car? She had a boyfriend in high school that was adept at such things, she recalls. Too bad she was more focussed on getting into his pants than on taking notes.

Meredith's gut instinct is to run, to hide, to protect herself, even if that means running in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, in the rain. She would rather do this than to turn back, than to let herself back into his trailer, where he's still laying there, staring up at the ceiling. For a moment, she considers calling Cristina to come pick her up – ironically, her cell phone is still clipped to the waistband of her jeans – but she doesn't think she can handle the "McBastard!" rhetoric that is sure to come her way when Cristina pulls her off the side of the road.

The truth is, this isn't entirely Derek's fault.

Still, his words hang in the air, wrapping themselves around her, cutting off her oxygen. She's left to try to breathe on her own.

Steeling herself, Meredith treks back to the trailer and tests the door to make sure it isn't locked. It isn't. She lets herself in again, and blinks rapidly, her heart hammering in her ears. She avoids looking at Derek; she just goes into the bedroom and crouches down next to the bed, sweeping her palm over the surface of the floor, blindly fumbling for her keys.

She can hear his breathing even over the thudding in her ears and she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, letting her sense of touch take over as she continues to search for the evasive key ring.

"Forgot my keys," she mutters, feeling as though she should offer some sort of explanation for why she's intruded on his personal space when he clearly doesn't want her there.

Silence.

And all of a sudden, she's not upset any more. She's just angry.

She sits back on her heels, her eyes flying open. "So, this is how it is?" she asks, her voice strained.

Derek sighs once. And again.

"I don't know."

"Well, that's great."

"Mer…"

"No. Just stop."

She glances at him as he blinks in surprise.

"There are things that have nothing to do with you, Derek; there are things that have nothing to do with us."

"You didn't swim," he accuses her. "You didn't swim and you know how. You know how, and you chose… I can't do this now."

"When?" she demands. She pulls herself to her feet, the keys once again forgotten.

"I don't know."

"Well, then you don't get to decide when."

His expression remains impassive.

"You tell me that you love me, and you tell me that you want me, but maybe not enough."

He shakes his head. "No. That's not it."

"How do I know that?" she asks him. "You tell me that you'll always be here, and then you run away and hide for three days. You run, and you hide, and when I try to give you what you're asking for, it's suddenly not what you want any more. I can't fix this by myself, Derek."

"Maybe it can't be fixed."

"Okay," she says, her heart breaking all over again. "Okay. Right. Keys." She starts to search for her keys again, and locates them under the bed. She picks them up and pockets them. "I get it," she says, as she starts to walk away.

"I'm exhausted," he mutters. She stops with her hand on the doorknob, about to let herself out of the trailer. "For a month, Meredith, a month, I've been going over it and over it, trying to figure out what I could have done to get through to you. I knew something was wrong; I pulled you out of the bathtub that morning. That morning! And I…" he stalls, and she turns back to see him scrub his hands across his face. His eyes are red-rimmed, something that she didn't notice before. "You wouldn't talk to me. You still don't want to."

Meredith throws up her hands in frustration. "I'm _trying_, Derek! I've told you everything. What more do you want?"

"I don't want to know that you're reading films!" he says, his voice rising out of frustration. "And I don't really care about the twenty kinds of cake that Burke brought in to work. I want to know about _you_, Meredith. You almost died, and you act like nothing happened. Your father comes back into your life… your stepmother, and you just… you act like everything is okay. It's not okay."

"No," she agrees, leaning her admittedly insignificant weight on the door. "It's not."

This time, she curls her fingers around her keys and can't find another reason to go back.

* * *

At first, there is only the sound of the rain falling against the metal exterior of the trailer. The drops are fat, heavy, and mournful. Splat. Splat, splat, splat. They drum against the trailer, obliterating everything else, at least until Meredith's car roars to life. Then there is a virtual cacophony of noise: the rain, the vehicle pulling away, the thudding of Derek's heart, and most of all, the chorus of voices in his head, begging and pleading that he not follow the same path that brought him here, to a lonely trailer in the middle of an island, in the middle of nowhere. 

_No man is an island_, Derek thinks, remembering an old high school poem: John Donne or someone. It's been a million years or more. _Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee._

He sighs, pushing his hands roughly through his hair before letting his arms fall, reaching across the expanse of the bed where Meredith was, where Meredith should be. He didn't mean to drive her away, and he wanted nothing more than to ask her to stay. But something had stopped him and he'd only reached for her after she'd gone.

Derek sits up, unable to relax with the nervous energy that is coursing through his veins. He shouldn't have let her go like that. It's dark, the rain is coming down hard, and she was upset. He should have driven her home, at least. He should have asked her to stay. But as much as running off to lick his wounds is his modus operandi, so too is it Meredith's. It's usually something that they can work through: it's relatable, if nothing else. But when they hurt each other, it's an entirely different beast.

Derek gets out of bed, and makes it as far as the end of the bedroom before he lurches forward, barely reaching the small bathroom before he's emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet. It's almost as if now that he's released the contents of his head, everything else must follow. He waits for the sick, clammy feeling to pass before he struggles to his feet and faces his reflection in the mirror over the sink. He is haggard: there are dark, fleshy circles under his eyes; his hair has more grey in it than he remembers seeing before, and his skin is sallow. He feels old, suddenly. Old, but certainly not sage. He always thought that aging would, at the very least, be accompanied by wisdom. If the saying that youth is wasted on the young were true, then it would follow that it was the wisdom of one's years that made a person realize this. But tonight, there is no wisdom to be found. Not in this trailer, and certainly not in the grey matter of Derek Shepherd's head.

He reaches for a facecloth, dampens it with cool water and brings it to his face, revelling in the feel of it against his burning skin. Then he brushes his teeth and turns back to return to the bedroom, hoping against hope that if he returns to his bed, he will pass out into blissful oblivion. But there is no escape against the torrent of thoughts flooding his mind, and he stares ahead without seeing for a long time when he collapses back in his bed, until finally, his frustration mounting, he sits up again.

A loud crack of thunder barely rattles him; it's the lightning outside that illuminates everything and shakes him to his core. For a moment, the room is flooded with light, and Derek catches a glimpse of something he hadn't noticed before. He gets out of bed and moves toward it; his fingers pluck it out from beneath the crate in the closet, and he holds it in his hand and carries it back to the bed. He takes a moment to catch his breath, then unfurls his fist and stares at the glimmering object there. It's a necklace: a gift he gave to Addison when they were med students, before he could throw money around to impress people. It's a simple heart-shaped pendant, with the tiniest of diamond chips hanging from the indentation. Derek allows a soft smile to drift across his face, remembering how, despite all the expensive jewellery she'd come to own, she wore this the most. He nearly stops breathing as it suddenly hits him that he hadn't seen it around her neck for months, at least, before he'd come up the stairs to find Mark in his place in their bed.

How long had it been? When had he stopped noticing?

It was the past, Derek knew. He was no longer in love with Addison; the time and distance had grown too great, and his love for Meredith had overshadowed all else. But sitting here, in the midst of a maelstrom, Derek couldn't help but fear that he hadn't learned a damn thing.

Addison had given him the keys: she'd told him, in no uncertain terms, that his biggest mistake was that he cut and run. He was doing it again. He knew, with no doubt, that if he stayed here, afraid of the storm, he'd be staying there alone.

* * *

The key won't fit. It won't slide into the lock of her front door the way that it usually does. But then, her hands usually aren't shaking violently, tears don't usually obscure her vision, and she doesn't usually have a hard time simply breathing. 

Breathing.

That is the whole problem, isn't it? Isn't that what Derek had said? That he didn't know if he wanted to breathe for her?

Well, who in the hell asked him anyway?

Meredith moans, and tries one more time to unlock the door. She's tempted to slide down next to it, to just stop right here. But she controls her shaking hand, blinks back the ever-threatening tears and turns the key in the lock. The door falls open and Meredith enters her own house with trepidation, praying with every cell in her body that Izzie won't suddenly appear on the stairs.

If I can just make it to my room, Meredith thinks. But as soon as she does, she regrets it. There are signs of Derek everywhere, from the dresser drawers she's cleaned out for him, to the aftershave he's left on the sink in her bathroom. She tries to ignore these little things, and she runs the shower in the other bathroom and strips out of her clothes, leaving them in a disgraceful heap on the floor. She'd like to just fall into bed, into a blissfully deep sleep, but without the aid of tequila, that isn't likely to happen. And it can't happen yet, anyway. He's still on her skin.

So many times after making love, she would lay tangled with him, the sheen of perspiration on their skin cooling, the smell of sex lingering everywhere, permeating the bedclothes, their hair, and their skin. Now, she wants nothing more than to be rid of it: if he can't breathe for her, she can't breathe without him, and this reminder of him around her is making it harder to do just that.

Breathe.

She has to remind herself to do it, as the tears come as soon as she's beneath the spray, and safe from Izzie's concerned prodding. The spray is hot, scalding her skin, and she stays beneath it until it runs cold and she's shivering. She turns the water off and climbs out of the bathtub, then wraps a towel around herself and sits on the edge of the bath, her hair dripping into her eyes. She doesn't care.

Derek knows.

He knows that she stopped, which is a secret that she's kept from everyone; it's something that she's barely admitted to herself. It's a shameful, dirty little secret that she hoped he would never know, but in all honesty, she isn't surprised that he does. He knows her better than she's ever allowed anyone to know her, save maybe for Cristina.

And yet, Cristina doesn't know. Or, at least, she hasn't divulged the secret to Meredith. They have an understanding between them: don't ask, don't tell. It works, within the confines of their friendship, at least.

It would appear that it doesn't work so well in a relationship.

But how much is she expected to share with him? How much of herself is she supposed to rest at his altar? He broke her once before, and experience tells her that she shouldn't be so quick to offer herself up again.

She wasn't trying to make light of their situation, or to make excuses for the mistakes that she's made when she told him that the things that made her stop for that blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment had nothing to do with him, or with them. For the most part, they didn't.

For the most part.

Living with her mother had been a constant struggle that resulted in pink hair and too much black eyeliner, followed by too many boys and too many bars. Of course, some of that fell on her father's shoulders as well. And then Ellis's disease had worn her out, had demanded too much and had returned too little.

But to be honest, it was Derek's fault, too.

She'd tried to be happy and shiny, and she loved him, and she thought she'd forgiven him for picking, choosing, and loving Addison. Or at least loving their life together, the way it had been, in the beginning. She was sure she'd forgiven him: she did not even doubt that now. She wanted him, and she loved him, and he loved her. But, in typical Meredith fashion, she'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After all, it wasn't without precedent.

People left. They promised that they'd be there, but when push came to shove, they decided at the eleventh hour that they couldn't breathe, not with her, not around her, and certainly not for her.

That is something, Meredith thinks, picking at a loose loop of the terrycloth towel that is still wrapped around her body, which is very difficult to explain to someone who has always felt loved and cherished. The second that you start believing that people aren't as good as their word, and that they will leave -- that everyone leaves -- it does something to your psyche. It festers and it grows, until the only thing you can conclude is that you don't deserve to be loved and cherished. And no matter how much Derek insisted that he would be there, the second he wasn't, all of those old insecurities would rear their ugly heads.

And, Meredith realizes, she overcompensated, telling Derek the unimportant, minute details of her day just to keep him close because her sixth sense about these things could feel him pulling away. Words were one thing, but his radio silence over the past number of days told her something else and sent her reeling.

He got that wrong, she thinks. She wasn't making light of things. In fact, it was just the opposite. She was desperately, irrationally doing whatever she could think of to hold on to him.

There is a tap on the bathroom that breaks Meredith's train of thought, and she starts, staring at the door, willing Izzie to go away.

"Mer?" her roommate questions. "I thought you were staying at Derek's tonight."

Meredith tries to reply, but the words start to turn into something incoherent, almost a moan, so she presses her lips together to keep them from trembling and squeezes her eyes shut.

"Meredith?" Izzie prods. "Are you okay in there?"

Meredith takes a shaky breath and clears her throat.

"Yeah," she manages. "I – he got paged," she lies.

"Oh," says Izzie. "Well, why aren't you using your own bathroom?"

"I wanted a shower," Meredith snaps. "Is that okay?"

There is a protracted silence, and then: "Sure, Mer. Are you sure you're okay?"

Meredith sighs. "I'm fine. I'll be out in a minute."

"Okay," Izzie says, her voice soft. "I'm sorry, it's just that I have to pee."

"Use my bathroom," Meredith says logically.

"Oh," Izzie says. "I… right. Sorry."

Meredith listens to her shuffle off and she finishes drying herself and slips into her pajamas. A few minutes pass, and she hears Izzie come out of her bedroom and go back to her own, the door closing softly behind her.

Meredith waits a moment, and then quickly slips back into her own bedroom. She gets into bed and tosses and turns fitfully. The sheets smell like Derek. Everything feels wrong. Outside, the lightning flashes across the sky.

It takes some time, but eventually, things become hazy and she starts to drift off.

She's not quite lucid, so when the bed shifts with the weight being deposited next to her, she's almost sure she's dreaming.

His breath is warm against her neck and she shivers involuntarily.

Derek doesn't speak. He just finds her hand in the dark, beneath the covers and twines his fingers with hers, while his other hand lingers in her hair.

She turns and looks at him through liquid eyes, her throat aching with the effort of holding back a sob.

"I'm not running," he whispers. He spoons her and she can feel his heartbeat against her back. Solid. Steady.

"I love you," she whispers back. "The only way I know how."

He kisses her temple and she feels his tears fall onto her skin.

"I know," he murmurs. "Me too."

"I'm breathing," she says.

There is a flash of lightning, a crash of thunder, and then --

"Me too."


End file.
